There is a great deal of pain in life and perhaps the only pain that can be avoided is the pain that comes from trying to avoid pain.

I, for instance, regard any particular man as finite, as one who has had a beginning and who will have an end. He has been born, and he is going to die. In the meantime, he has a body that roots him to this time and this place.

A man who says that men are machines may be a great scientist. A man who says he is a machine is 'depersonalized' in psychiatric jargon.

Life is a sexually transmitted disease and the mortality rate is one hundred percent.

In a world full of danger, to be a potentially seeable object is to be constantly exposed to danger. Self-consciousness, then, may be the apprehensive awareness of oneself as potentially exposed to danger by the simple fact of being visible to others. The obvious defence against such a danger is to make oneself invisible in one way or another.

Perhaps God is not dead; perhaps God himself is mad.

Children are not yet fools, but we shall turn them into imbeciles like ourselves, with high I.Q.'s if possible.